This is a study of the hand's development - left or right depending on handedness - in 16 movements identified as prior to and basic for the reproduction of cursive handwriting. It is based on a sample of 256 male and female children, between the ages of 3 and 7, from lower or upper midd1e to upper socio-economic backgrounds. The children were divided into 8 age groups, an interval of 6 months between each. In each age group there was the same number of boys and girls and of each socio-economic group studied. Results showed that 50% of the upper socio-econonúc groups were able to reproduce alI the movements against 40% of the other group. 4 movements were found as responsible for the difficulties of the children' s from both socioeconomics categories and these result allow to identify them as the most critical for these ages groups. The girls, as in an other pilot study, reproduce more frequently the movements than the boys, especially the girls of the upper socio-economic leveI. Several suggestions are made in given more attention to these aspects in children' s of the ages groups studied and in lower ages groups.
